John Leguizamo

Even as a kid, I knew there was something off with 1993’s Super Mario Bros. movie. I don’t remember being super excited about it coming out — not like I was for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a few years earlier — but I do remember being confused by the tiny headed lizard dudes and, well, everything else.

These days, I’m happy the movie exists because it gave us Ertl action figures based on Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper AND Fisher Stevens. What other movie can say that? More importantly, what accent is this kid trying to do?

I don’t see a lot of movies in the theater. As a result, I try to use my Netflix queue — yup, still have the disc subscription in addition to the streaming one — to remind myself of what newer movies I want to see. But, as anyone with a queue knows, these things wind up acquiring hundreds of possible films, many of which get sent and then sit around for weeks.

I’d sat on a movie like that for an embarrassing amount of time and vowed to watch the next film with a quickness. That turned out to be the 2014 Keanu Reeves movie John Wick directed by Chad Stahelski. A lot of people told me how good this film was, so I was interested in what I came to know as “the dog revenge movie.” I actually followed through, popped the movie in and got about 25 minutes in before the disc got all skitchy and I had to send it back. Continue reading We Want Action: John Wick (2014)